


Gordon Gets A Minecraft BF

by buunbi



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: M/M, Streamer AU, Wayne is also technically a character but he’s probs not gonna be in it much, twitch streamer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:13:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24271876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buunbi/pseuds/buunbi
Summary: Alternatively, AU where Gordon and Benrey are Twitch streamers
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 64
Kudos: 554





	1. Chapter 1

“God, why do people keep Tweeting at me to collab with that fuckin’ Benrey guy, of all people...” Gordon leaned back slightly in his desk chair, holding his phone out in front of him like an old man as he got two more @ mentions. One was fanart, the other being yet another ‘Are you friends with @ProGamerBenrey? You guys should totally collab!’. He retweeted the fanart and ignored the other one.

“I dunno, people like seeing their favourite content creators create content together?” Wayne, Gordon’s roommate, replied from his spot on his bed, “and he brought up that he likes your streams in his last one.”

Gordon frowned and looked at his friend. “You watch his streams?”

“I watch him sometimes, but not very much. I didn’t watch the one he mentioned you in, like I literally just found out from one of my friends because I asked if they knew what was going on.”

“I don’t even know what kind of streams he _does_.” He turned back to his phone, opening Twitch to see if he could find a VOD to check out.

“Mostly like, game-breaking shit like using cheats and fucking with code to clip through maps or change the player model size or whatever.”

Gordon opened the latest VOD up on Benrey’s profile, a GTA V stream from the previous day. It was only an hour long, so he figured he’d watch the whole thing to get a feel for what the guy was like. His voice was dull and he seemed to get distracted really easily, but the gameplay was interesting enough that it balanced out.

About twenty minutes in Gordon saw his own username pop up in the chat window in the corner, then past-Benrey noticed it too.

“ _Oh, yeah I watch uh... I watch Gordon’s streams all the time, man. Fuckin’... every day. He seems like a really cool dude. Not as... not as cool as me, but still_.” There was a pause for a moment as the chat sped up, flooded with people asking questions. “ _Wh- huh? Slow down, gamers, I can’t... read that fast, uh... collab? Like, me and Gordon? We do really different shit, guys, I dunno if that’d like, work. Plus I don’t think he even like, knows who I am. Like I’d totally be down but I dunno if he would_.”

After that Benrey ignored the still racing chat to spawn in a bunch of helicopters to drop on the cops chasing him. The chat eventually calmed down, thankfully for the poor mods, and Gordon wasn’t brought up again for the rest of the video.

Benrey was right about them making wildly different content. Where Benrey just messed around with cheats, Gordon’s streams tended to be more on the informative side. He did walkthroughs of games he liked while talking about the lore, trivia, and stuff about game development. He had even recently started working on developing his own game, and had been streaming the more interesting parts of that (mainly the sprite art).

Still, it could be interesting to change things up a bit, and his fans certainly seemed to want it. He’d be lying if he said Benrey’s stream wasn’t entertaining.

His next order of business in checking out Benrey’s vibes was his Twitter.

He scoffed at the MLG meme in the header, then at the _gay and home of phobic B)_ in his bio. Wayne glanced up at him with an eyebrow raised but didn’t make any comment.

Gordon hit _follow_ and only a few minutes later Benrey posted a tweet.

* * *

**benrey** _@ProGamerBenrey_

oh hey gordon followed me, rad

———————————————

 **Gordos Freemn** _@DrFreeman_

_replying to @ProGamerBenrey_

With all the spam tagging that’s been going on today, it was bound to happen eventually

———————————————

 **benrey** _@ProGamerBenrey_

_replying to @ProGamerBenrey and @DrFreeman_

lol sorry

* * *

Gordon gave a small nose exhale of a laugh, then went back to watch another one of Benrey’s stream VODs.

On Benrey’s end, he was flipping out. Or, as much as he was capable of flipping out. He walked outside to where his housemate was playing with his dog.

“Tommy. Tommy, holy shit.”

Tommy stood from taking the ball out of Sunkist’s mouth and looked over at Benrey with a small frown. “Is something wrong, Benrey?”

“Gordon fucking Freeman just followed me on Twitter.” Tommy’s eyes widened and a smile spread across his face.

“Well, that’s great, isn’t it?” He threw the ball he was holding across the yard for Sunkist to chase after.

“As long as he doesn’t scroll too far back, yeah.”

“What do yo— oh do you mean because you uh, said he was really hot when he did his face reveal?”

“Kinda, uh, yeah.”

“Hey, maybe he’ll just take it as a compliment! I’m sure he won’t mind.” Tommy grinned at him. Sunkist returned with the ball, going to Benrey instead of Tommy. Benrey didn’t want to touch the slobber-covered toy, so ordered the dog to drop it on the ground so he could kick it instead.

“I uh... wh? Yeah.” Benrey only vaguely remembered what Tommy had said, or even what they were talking about in the first place. He turned abruptly and went back inside.

A few hours later, Benrey received another Twitter notification, this time telling him he’d gotten a DM. It was, of course, from Gordon.

* * *

**Gordos Freemn**

Hey, dude

**Benrey**

uuuuuh hi

**Gordos Freemn**

Ookay so I’ve never actually collabed with anyone before, but I watched a few of your streams back and while we do have like, wildly different content I think it’d maybe be fun to try and figure something out, if you’re down for it?

**Benrey**

yeah that sounds uh

totally lit, fam

**Gordos Freemn**

Cool!   
  


* * *

They set about organising what they were going to stream (Minecraft, just for something easy) and when (in a few days), most of the work being done by Gordon while Benrey just went along with it. It did frustrate Gordon a bit, but just from his streams, he could tell that Benrey was always a bit out of it so he tried not to let it get to him.

They ended up chatting for a while longer afterwards, Gordon trying desperately to be patient with Benrey’s odd speech patterns. He always took forever to type even the shortest things, it was rather irksome. Gordon was just going to have to get used to it if he wanted this to be any kind of friendship.

Eventually, Gordon had to go to bed, it already being late afternoon when they started talking and now being near 10pm. They said their goodbyes, and Gordon crawled into bed with a smile on his face.

“Damn, just hours ago you were calling him _that Benrey guy_ , and now it seems like you’re best buds or something.” Wayne snorted. He was still up doing something on his laptop.

“We’re not, I just think it’s gonna be fun to collab with someone.” Gordon mumbled.

“Whatever you say, dude.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who left comments on the last chapter:  
> 1\. Thank you I love you  
> 2\. Pls stop with the ‘add another chapter or I’ll riot’ stuff this is very clearly going to have multiple chapters lol. About 7, actually, if I’ve estimated correctly. Comments like that are the exact opposite of motivating, they’re just plain stressful.

Gordon and Benrey had announced their collaboration on Twitter to a resoundingly positive response. The two of them still weren’t 100% sure what the stream itself was going to entail; they were just going to, as Benrey so eloquently put it, ‘fuck around’.

As soon as they had both logged on and Benrey had started streaming, Gordon could tell this was going to be A Lot.

“Yo, why the fuck do you- why are y- why do you still have the default skin? Noob?” Benrey teased, crouching in front of him and punching him. They were in survival mode at least for the start, so Gordon got knocked back a bit. Benrey’s skin seemed to be some kind of security guard.

“I don’t play Minecraft with other people enough to need a different skin, dude.”

“Well fuckin’... get good, scrub,” Benrey punched him again, “I’m not playin’ with you until you- you look better. Scrub.”

“What skin would I even use?” He switched his POV so he was looking at himself from the front; he thought the default skin looked enough like him that it didn’t matter. Brown skin, dark hair, the only real difference was the hair length and eye colour, Gordon’s were bright emerald green rather than dark blue.

“Fuckin’... I dunno, man. Literally anything else? Your name’s Gordon Freeman use a fuckin’ Half-life skin.”

Gordon’s eyes widened. _Why didn’t I think of that?_ “Oh shit, good point, gimme a sec.”

He listened to Benrey talking to the chat while he tried to find a skin he liked.

“Wh...? No, we- uh... what? We only like, met a couple days ago be- because you guys fuckin’... annoyed the shit out of him—“

“I wasn’t that annoyed.”

“You annoyed the shit out of him until he... uh...” Benrey completely trailed off, not finishing his sentence.

“You good, man?” Gordon frowned, mildly concerned.

“What? Huh? Are you good?”

“What?”

“What?”

“Y’know what, nevermind. I found a skin.” It was the only Gordon Freeman skin that wasn’t alarmingly pale, so he put it on and logged back into Minecraft. Benrey was satisfied with that, and they got to playing.

The first half-hour or so was relatively normal survival Minecraft, minus Gordon getting repeatedly punched off of cliffs. Then Benrey got bored and decided it was time to switch to creative mode, but leave Gordon in survival.

He spawned in a whole stack of zombies, cackling maniacally as Gordon ran away from them yelling and cursing Benrey’s name. Wayne could be heard laughing in the background through Gordon’s mic.

Then came the creepers, and the withers, and oh fuck why are there like fifty ender dragons and a giant zombie what the FU—

Despite his constant deaths and the joy Benrey was taking in his misery, Gordon would be lying if he said he wasn’t having a good time. It was such a stark departure from what he normally did, it was refreshing.

After the stream ended a couple of hours later, Gordon and Benrey stayed on their Discord call for a while just chatting idly and playing around on their Minecraft world in creative.

“God, I need to edit the skin I found or something I refuse to present myself as a white man in any game, let alone Minecraft.” Gordon said. Benrey paused his constant skeleton spawning to snort a small laugh.

“Fuckin’ white bitch boy... I’m white a boy- guy. I’m a white guy.” He laughed to himself.

“Hey, have you ever done a face reveal? I didn’t see anything when I Googled you so I’m assuming not.”

“Uh... no. Don’t really, uh... I don’t see the point- the purpose? The point of it. Also, like... I dunno, I kinda look like a rat or something.”

Gordon frowned. “How could you look like a rat? You’re a human.”

“I’m, uh... that’s what you think. Bitch boy.”

The implications of that startled Gordon so much he simply didn’t answer. He heard Benrey laugh on the other side.

Benrey really was a rather mysterious man; the most that was known about him was his first name and his age (two years older than Gordon, making him twenty-six), and even then some people doubted the name thing. ‘Benrey’ didn’t exactly sound like a real name.

Funnily enough, nobody questioned the legitimacy of Gordon’s full name. The surname ‘Freeman’ must just be that common that they thought it a coincidence and nothing more. Truthfully it was his real name, but only because he’d legally changed it to that as soon as he turned eighteen because of the age-old transgender tradition of naming yourself after fictional characters you like.

He had never brought up the fact that he was trans online, just because he didn’t really see the need, but he was very open about the fact that he was bi, and advocated for LGBT+ rights of all kinds.

Benrey was clearly gay, if his Twitter bio was anything to go by, so that’s another small morsel of information about the mysterious man.

Gordon had completely zoned out at this point, only startled back into reality by hearing Benrey saying his name in increasingly stupid voices through his headphones. He apologised, and they went back to playing until Gordon had to go. He was taking his son out to lunch for his birthday.

Nobody online knew he had a son, so he just gave the excuse that he had to run some errands and Benrey was cool with it.

Gordon had a good relationship with his ex-boyfriend; they had shared custody of Joshua and had remained fast friends since their breakup. Joshua stayed with his other dad the most just because he lived alone and Gordon had a roommate to deal with, but it worked out well for everyone. Joshua and Wayne got along fine so that was rarely an issue.

The only real reason Gordon had broken up with Marcus was that at that point in time they had been acting more like friends than boyfriends anyway, so it was only a matter of time.

Joshua was turning five that weekend, and when Gordon asked him where he’d like to go he started chanting _Chuck E. Cheese_ over and over until Gordon pretended to think about it and said yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marcus is just a random name I pulled out of my arse lol. But also sorry for that tangent about random shit at the end?? It’s like,, character building. World building? I dunno lol this chapters a bit shit


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ones a bit shorter because I currently have brain fungus and it is erasing my ability to have thoughts, but it has a drawing I did so I’m gonna pretend that makes up for it

It had only been one day since their first stream together, and they were already organising the next one. They were going for Minecraft again, since Gordon had edited his skin and he didn’t want that effort to go to waste. The stream was going to be on his channel this time so it wouldn’t even be seen much, but it was the principle of it that mattered.

It went much the same as last time, with Benrey messing stuff up all over the joint and Gordon doing his best to actually play the goddamn game. At one point Benrey started a joke about Gordon’s feet because the texture of the boots on his skin was weird, and he henceforth refused to call him anything besides Gordon Feetman.

They were in a world Gordon created this time, so Benrey had a lot less freedom when it came to messing stuff up just because Gordon refused to give him any kind of admin permissions. The way he solved this was by finding a skeleton spawner and leading all the skeletons to Gordon in the cover of darkness.

Eventually Benrey got bored of Gordon just killing all the skeletons he found, so they both fell into actually just playing Minecraft. By the end of the stream they had built a decently sized house, gained a collection of cats, and Benrey had insisted on having their beds next to each other. Gordon compromised on that by having said beds one block apart.

Gordon did eventually relent and give Benrey admin perms about ten minutes before the stream ended, mainly just because his audience demanded it. Instead of immediately switching himself into creative mode, Benrey stayed in survival while spawning hordes of hostile mobs for him and Gordon to fight together. Gordon was well aware he could just use a /kill command to get rid of them all, but he was having far too much fun for that.

After that stream, the two of them fell into a kind of routine. Every few days they’d stream together, alternating between Benrey’s channel and Gordon’s, and eventually branching out beyond Minecraft into stuff like GMod or GTA Online.

They’d been growing closer over the course of a few weeks, up until one day Gordon was talking to Benrey and asked if he could ever get a personal face reveal as a joke, but then actually received a selfie from his friend.

This was after a lot of internal debate from Benrey, and also consulting Tommy, who was, of course, incredibly insistent that Benrey send the picture.

* * *

**BBBBBBenrey**

  
**Gordon**

You’re a liar, you don’t look like a rat at all

I want my money back

**BBBBBBenrey**

damn i should’ve told u to pay me first lmao

if u ever want feet pics you’re gonna have to pay

**Gordon**

WHY on EARTH would I want your feet pics??

**BBBBBBenrey**

idk what ur into man

gordon feetman

**Gordon**

Okay no, that’s your thing I had nothing to do with that

**BBBBBBenrey**

they’re ur feet bro

**Gordon**

-_-

Anyways what I was trying to say was you look nice

* * *

Tommy was not-so-subtly reading over Benrey’s shoulder, and Benrey could practically hear him smile. Benrey’s face had gone bright red as he shot back some dismissive, characteristically snarky retort. He got another ‘-_-‘ face in response.

“Do you think he likes you?” Tommy asked, and Benrey could feel him bouncing on his heels.

“Wh...? I dunno, man. ‘S probably just... a bro complimentin’ his bro.”

“I think he likes you.”

“Sure, whatever.”

* * *

Gordon was definitely gaining feelings for Benrey. He was funny in his own dry, droll way, and pretty nice when he wasn’t blowing up Gordon’s stuff in video games.

And now he was _cute_.

Gordon relayed this to Wayne, who was very supportive. Gordon hadn’t really been in a relationship since Marcus, and while he couldn’t guarantee that Benrey reciprocated his feelings (he had, in fact, seen the tweet where Benrey said he was hot, but that didn’t really indicate much) it still felt nice to like someone in that way again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sent that drawing to some of my friends and one of them said Benrey looks like a gay chad and like. Yeah  
> Also Tommy made him the ‘Benrey’ friendship bracelet. Tommy has a matching one that Benrey made for him :p
> 
> If y’all wanna follow me on tumblr my main is @crowquake and my hlvrai sideblog is @teams-nice :3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank y’all for being patient here is this longer chapter *kisses you on the forehead with your permission*  
> This is gonna end up shorter than I initially thought, I’m either gonna cut it off here or write one more chapter, haven’t quite decided yet  
> You can consider this pretty much finished now though, if there’s another chapter it’ll just be like, an epilogue.

**Gordon**

Hey

**BBBBBBenrey**

suh dude

**Gordon**

My roommates out of town for a few days and I’m already bored

**BBBBBBenrey**

sux 2 be u lol

**Gordon**

Why must you delight in my suffering

**BBBBBBenrey**

it’s funny

**Gordon**

Rude

Hey what’s your thoughts on video chatting?

**BBBBBBenrey**

do u mean video calling

**Gordon**

Yes, that

**BBBBBBenrey**

uuuuuuh

idk

never done it before

**Gordon**

Neither have I tbh

**BBBBBBenrey**

i’m down for it tho

**Gordon**

Cool

* * *

“Hi.”

“Yo.”

Gordon started laughing and buried his face in his pillow, earning a raised eyebrow from Benrey.

“Sorry, just realised I have no clue what to talk about.” _And also you’re really cute, but we’ll let that slide_. Benrey let out his own small laugh.

“Wanna see my roommates dog?”

“Sure.”

This was really just an excuse to turn the camera on his phone around because holy fuck was Gordon pretty right now. It was fairly early in the morning (as in 9 AM, which was early for them) so Gordon had his very soft looking hair out, and from what little Benrey could see from the angle Gordon had his phone at he also seemed to be shirtless.

Benrey really just wanted the safety of staring at Gordon without him knowing. Being caught blushing by anyone but Tommy would ruin all his vibes.

Speaking of Tommy, he was outside topping up Sunkist’s food bowl for the morning.

“Yo, Tommy!”

His roommate looked up from giving Sunkist a hug. Benrey watched as Gordon’s eyes widened.

“Is he really small or is that dog really big?” Gordon asked. Tommy looked confused for a second before his eyes lit up.

“Sunkist is just really big!” Tommy bounced on his heels. “My dad made her for me, she’s the perfect dog!”

“Your d- what?”

“His dad’s some kinda scientist.” Benrey offered.

“That... doesn’t explain much, but okay.”

“She’s immortal, too!” Tommy walked over and crouched low so he was looking directly in the camera. There was a nine-inch height difference between him and Benrey, and sometimes it bothered Benrey so much he considered buying a pair of tall platform shoes just to even them out a bit.

Gordon looked astonished, eyes wide enough that even behind the glare of his slightly-askew glasses Benrey could see just how green they were.

After watching Tommy run around with Sunkist for a bit, Benrey took phone-Gordon back inside to keep talking about video games they liked. At some point Gordon got up to put some proper clothes on, giving Benrey a full view of his shirtless form (are those top surgery scars? Cool) and Benrey had to tilt his phone up so that the redness of his face wasn’t visible. Somewhere in the back of his head, he heard Squidward saying ‘oh no, he’s hot!’.

Unfortunately for Benrey, his blush had lingered by the time Gordon was sat back on his bed.

“Hey, so I was thinking— are you okay?” Gordon had a concerned furrow to his brow, having just noticed Benrey’s predicament.

“Wh? Yeah. You’re ugly.”

Gordon blinked a couple of times, and ultimately decided to just move on from that.

“Anyways, I was thinking, what area do you live in? If you live nearby maybe we could properly hang out, or something.”

It took Benrey a whole minute and a half to process this. When he told Gordon where he lived, those green eyes lit up.

“Hey, that’s only about half an hours drive from here! We could totally make that work.”

* * *

That was how, a week later, Gordon found himself sitting outside his local movie theatre waiting for Benrey. He’d said he was going to be a few minutes late just because Tommy had to drive him, and they had to stop somewhere first.

Gordon had managed to befriend Tommy over the past week too, which is how he immediately knew that the bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulling up in front of him had to belong to him, especially considering the soda themed bumper stickers.

Sure enough, Benrey stepped out of the passenger seat a moment later. Tommy drove off after a quick ‘bye, have fun on your date!’, leaving both of them confused and flustered.

“Did you tell him this was a date?” Gordon asked.

“Huh? No, I don’t- I dunno why he said that.”

Gordon shook his head and stood up, just then realising how short Benrey was. He was desperately trying not to comment on it, but,

“Oh my god, how are you that small?”

“Fuck you.”

Gordon snorted a laugh and resisted the urge to ruffle Benrey’s hair. It looked like he’d put some kind of effort into it — also it apparently was not as short as it looked, he had a ponytail at the back — and Gordon didn’t wanna mess that up.

They went in to get their food and tickets, then found their way to the theatre where they were going to watch some new animated movie that neither of them had a particular interest in, but it was the least bad looking of all the movies that were on that day.

There were so few people in there it was almost funny; just them and two small families that both sat down near the front row. Gordon and Benrey took three seats at the very back row, two for them and one for their shared large bucket of popcorn.

“This is so lame.” Benrey said, voice flat as ever but there was a small smile on his face.

“Lame stuff can be fun.”

“Yeah, if you’re also lame.”

“You agreed to this movie, Benrey.”

Benrey didn’t have a reasonable reply to that.

As the previews played, neither of them could stop thinking about what Tommy said, off-handed and joking as it was.

“Hey, is thi—“

“Would yo—“

They spoke over each other, then Gordon gestured for Benrey to speak.

“Would... uh... what if this- date? Y’know... like... yeah.” Benrey’s eyes were wide, and after he finished that mess of a sentence he snapped his face away from Gordon, staring at his hands instead.

Instead of a verbal answer, he felt the scratch of a kiss on the cheek from someone with a beard. That seemed to be a yes.

He glanced back over at Gordon, who was in a similar spot of Not Looking At Him after having moved back to his seat.

The movie was as asinine and just generally silly as they thought it’d be, but it was fun to watch and that was all that mattered. The part they most enjoyed was hearing the other laugh at whatever dumb stuff was happening on screen.

A few times they went to grab popcorn at the same time and their hands brushed, resulting in a new round of red faces. Neither of them expected to get like this when they met in real life, but alas they were both messes.

They didn’t really have any plans once the movie ended, so they ended up just wandering around the nearby mall for a while. Initially, they were holding hands, but after two people told Gordon his son was adorable they decided to keep their hands to themselves.

Neither of them knew how Benrey was getting mistaken for a child, besides maybe his height, but even then 5’3” wasn’t the height most people thought of when they thought of children.

They ended up getting lunch from a Dunkin’ Donuts they found, then sitting outside in a shady area to eat it. The author does not know what kinds of lunch foods you can get from Dunkin’ Donuts as he is Australian and we do not have those here, so use your imagination for that part.

“So are we, like... dating?” Gordon asked after a few moments of silent eating.

“Uh... sure. If you... want?”

“Cool. Yeah, cool.”

Gordon’s first thought after making it official with Benrey was _‘does this mean Joshua has three dads now?’_.

* * *

Gordon drove Benrey back to his and Tommy’s place, following Benrey’s characteristically vague directions and somehow managing to only get lost once. He wasn’t planning on giving Benrey a kiss goodbye or anything like that when they finally arrived, but Benrey apparently was as he leaned up to kiss Gordon.

Gordon was surprised at first, but it wasn’t unwelcome so he melted into it. It only lasted a few seconds, and ended abruptly with Benrey pulling back, looking in Gordon’s eyes, saying a quick ‘bye’, then getting out of the car and going inside his house.

Gordon took a moment to compose himself before leaning over to shut Benr— the passenger side door, then took off on his way home.

As soon as he walked into the small apartment he shared with Wayne, he took a deep breath, eyes wide as he leaned back against the front door. His roommate looked over at him from the kitchenette, an amused look in his eyes.

“Date go well?”

“Yeah.”


End file.
